After Iowa, the conventional wisdom about New Hampshire's Republican primary seemed clear enough: Donald Trump had slipped but was still the state's frontrunner, Ted Cruz had earned a much-needed victory, and Marco Rubio was set to sweep aside his establishment-lane competition after outperforming the polls all the way to third place in Iowa.

Then came the chaos and carnage of Saturday night's debate--most notably with Rubio's stumbling during an interrogation from Chris Christie--and the candidates are scrambling to pick up the pieces.

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His Iowa upset loss aside, Trump continues to lead by double-digits in every poll. And while Iowa demonstrated thatpolls can go wrong, it would be nothing short of shocking should Trump tumble out of the top spot.

The drama, then, is in the frenetic scramble for second place. In the latest UMass/7News tracking poll released Monday morning, and Monmouth University's latest poll out Sunday, John Kasich, Rubio, Jeb Bush and Cruz are all clustered between 12 and 14 percent. (Trump has consistently hovered around 30 percent in high-quality polls.) Christie, meanwhile, languished around 5 percent.

Those results do little to capture the impact of Saturday night, meaning the full impact of Christie’s romp over Rubio won’t be known until voters cast their ballots Tuesday. (An internal poll released by a pro-Kasich super PAC on Sundayshowed Rubio falling to fourth.)

The fight right now is hottest among Rubio, Bush, Christie and Kasich, as they’re all competing for the same pool of support. And for them, Tuesday’s showing is less about delegates and more about scoring a result that bolsters their case that they should be the establishment champion.

To that end, Christie continues to tout his experience while going after Rubio’s, Bush continued to paint himself as the “adult in a room”, and Kasich hoped to turn his relatively moderate economic policies into an advantage.

Rubio is taking perhaps the greatest gamble of them all: betting that the outsiders are wrong, he’s right, and his relentless (or "robotic"--to his critics) attacks on Obama are exactly what voters need to hear.

Christie on Monday hoped to finish what he started Saturday night, painting Rubio as unqualified and nullifying any advantage the senator gained after Iowa. The New Jersey Governor continued to twist the knife on television: "I mean, Marco just--you know, he gets told what to say and he repeats it," Christie told the co-hosts of MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "That is what he does."

Christie alluded to Saturday’s debate once more at a town hall in Hudson, touting his experience as a governor. “When the lights get that bright, you either shine or you melt,” he said. “We cannot afford to have a president who melts.”

Christie hopes the debate toughness he displayed can win over state voters, convincing them that as a former federal prosecutor he's the "national security" conservative, and unite the party behind him.

For his part, Rubio continued to drive home his line about Obama on Monday morning, just as he had on Sunday morning and on Saturday night.

"Voters across the country and especially here in New Hampshire got to hear me say repeatedly the truth: that Barack Obama is trying to redefine the role of government in our country and America's role in the world," the senator told "CBS This Morning," remarking upon the fact that his campaign" raised more money in the first hour of that debate than any other debate" as evidence of his success.

If Rubio stumbles, it would have an ancillary benefit for Bush and Kasich, who both need to sell the establishment on their respective candidacies. Bush, hoping New Hampshire will bolster his flagging prospects, was more reserved in his comments about Rubio’s debate performance, saying it was "really weird because that's not who he is that I know."

But he still managed to get his shot in: "It's not comfortable for me to attack Marco Rubio, but I do think that everybody needs to be challenged because, I'll tell you what, whoever is the Republican nominee, they better fasten their seat belts because the Clinton hit machine is coming straight at you," he remarked Monday to CNN's Chris Cuomo. "And so, this is beanbag compared to what's going to happen. And being tested is an important part of why New Hampshire is important."

He continued in his town hall events. Addressing the Rotary Club in Nashua, Bush declared that he would not blame Obama when he becomes president, an implicit dig at Rubio and others who have made their criticism of the current president a key part of their message.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m really kind of tired of politicians that blame their predecessors. I have a personal feeling about this just having watched it kind of for a while,” he said to laughter in the audience. “And my pledge to you, when I’m president of the United States, I will not blame Barack Obama for a single thing. ‘Cause the day I’m sworn into office, it’s on my watch. Whatever it is.”

Bush also called Christie a “great guy” and continued his attack on Trump, calling him a “loser,” a “liar” and a “whiner” all inone tweet.

(Trump, as he always does, had a comeback at the ready: "Everybody is laughing at Jeb Bush-spent $100 million and is at bottom of pack. A pathetic figure!" he tweeted around noon, minutes after calling the former governor of Florida "a stiff" who no one would hire for a job.)

Aside from the Trump shots, however, Bush stuck to the argument that has run through his campaign since the beginning: that he's an electable, experienced conservative. Thus far, that message hasn't resonated in the polls, but Bush is hoping a surprise finish, combined with a massive campaign war chest, would be enough to keep him in the race.

Kasich has a similar plan, but on Monday was presented with an unfamiliar challenge: win over a voter who was considering going Democrat instead. At a town hall in Windham, Kasich responded to a woman who told him that she was torn over whether to vote for the Republican governor, or for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.

Kasich launched into a minute-long explanation of why he represents the happy medium between Clinton ("too brittle") and Sanders ("too out there”). "I’m the right porridge," he said. "One of them is too hot, the other one is too cold, but I got the right temperature, OK?

In the outsider lane, things are relatively quiet for Ted Cruz. With Trump out of reach and the establishment candidates attacking each other, his campaign focused on a small piece of positive news. His bid to win over libertarians got a boost when he was endorsed by state Sen. Kevin Avard, formerly the New Hampshire chairman for Rand Paul's campaign.

Back at the top of the polls, Trump insisted that a smaller ground operation than his rivals wouldn’t sink him, saying that his stature as a candidate was what mattered most.

"I think this: I think I've done my job, OK? I've done my job. I'm the product, the product is me in a sense," the Republican candidate told CNN's Dana Bash. "But you know, you can have all the data in the world if you don't have the right person, OK? So up here, we've done well."